Dictatorship and political laziness

Sunday’s Parade magazine’s cover story asked and answered the question, “Who is the world’s worst dictator?” The author listed the  top 10 men and justified each selection with a description of the horrible conditions their countries were in. The clear implication was that these deplorable conditions occurred because the country was run by a dictator, and in particular, this one. Dictatorial rule goes hand in hand with a poor standard of living and poor quality of life. Right?

The problem is, not all of the men listed could truly be called dictators. (And yes, they’re all men. Let’s not be distracted by a gender argument here.) Since the author never defined what he meant by “dictator”, however, he was free to lump together despots of any stripe into his list.

Memo to Parade:  “despot” does not mean “dictator.”

A despot is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, “an autocratic ruler.” A despot rules arbitrarily, usually punishingly, from a position of unchecked power. Despots are the broader class of totalitarians into which dictators fit. A dictator is a despot who rules from a position of personal power, whatever he or she says (dictates), personally, is law. It’s a single person, whose authority draws from their own source. A king or emperor inherits the throne; Caesar or Hitler abolishes the secondary institutions of government (or act as if they did); a military dictator issues orders which must be strictly obeyed. In a plutocracy (a system of collective despotism), however, the despot may run his totalitarian regime within the confines of such institutions: an Ayatollah must have the support of his senior mullahs, the Communist chairman must obtain the cooperation of his party or central committee.

There’s plenty of grey area, of course:  the central committee, the mullahs, or the Senate may be hand-picked puppets of the leader; a generals orders need to be supported and executed by his chiefs of staff. One has to draw the line somewhere. The point is to draw the line – stake one’s claim – rather than blunt one’s point, as did the Parade article, by leaving the definitions vague and proceeding willy-nilly into political “analysis.”

What different does it make? Plenty. The transfer of power in a plutocracy is usually very orderly:  a new chairman or mullah succeeds the old from the ranks of the second tier. The institutions of government are stable, not depending upon the leader himself. Remove the leader (Kim Jong-il, the current Ayatollah), and nothing much changes. In a dictatorship, removal of the leader (Hitler, Caesar, Saddam Hussein) means everything:  the regime collapses without him. The implications for what, if anything, the regime’s enemies can do about the situation are very different in a dictatorship vs. a plutocracy.

Okay, but still. It’s just Parade; so what? The reason it matters is this:  lots of people read Parade, and treat it like an authoritative source (particularly people who are not very astute politically). When a magazine of its distribution publishes such sloppy work, it only encourages more sloppy political thinking. This sort of political laziness is what got us George W as president, an intractable war in Iraq, a $500 billion annual deficit, and prescription drugs that cost twice here what they do in Canada.

Whatever one’s political leanings, we owe it to ourselves and each other to, at the very least, (1) get the facts, (2) ask questions, and (3) think clearly about the answers.

Otherwise, the U.S. may someday end up on Parade’s “Top 10 Dictatorships” list.